Cold City Streets

by L.H. Thomson

  The train traversed a level crossing, bells ringing and safety arms across the road. As it pulled towards the next stop, Tommy inched his way towards the doors. Cobi spotted it and did the same. The train slowed as it approached the platform, a slight and sudden jerk following as it came to a halt.

  The doors slid open.

  Tommy bolted, pushing his way through, arms flailing as people tried to get out of his way. Cobi followed suit, trying not to hurt anyone as he pushed them aside. At the staircase, Tommy saw the two security guys standing by the door and froze. Then he looked back over his shoulder and saw Cobi closing ground. The warning sound pinged to serve notice the doors were closing on the cars again. Before they could side shut, Tommy turned around and jumped back on board. Cobi tried to counter but there were people backed up behind him. “Out of my way!” he yelled. “Emergency, out of my way please!”

  But it was too late. The doors slid shut, and the train began to roll north.

  Cobi looked down the line. The hospital stop was a convenience; the next station was the university, less than a mile ahead. He turned back to platform and headed for the station doors, springing past the two guards, up the stairs and back down on the other side, so that he was on the west side of the street. Then he began to run north, leg muscles straining as he poured on the speed. That was what Allan always said, right? You’re not the biggest quarterback, Cobi, but man you’ve got fast feet. So prove it.

  He sprinted the half-mile, adrenaline fighting off muscle fatigue as he reached the university stop. Cobi paused for a moment outside the front doors, taking a quick breather as students and other commuters filed in.

  The door swung open, and Tommy walked out. Cobi looked up just as Tommy spotted him, a look of panic on his face. The younger man turned and fled back into the station. Cobi ran after him, winded from running there but doing his best to keep up. Tommy blew by the guard at the ticket gate, who yelled after him but didn’t pursue, instead taking out a walkie talkie just as Cobi followed suit, warning his colleagues ahead of potential trouble.

  Cobi rounded the corner at the bottom of the steps, into a corridor that led to the platform; Tommy was just thirty yards ahead, watching as two trains left in either direction without him. He stopped by the edge of the tracks and looked both ways hopefully.

  Cobi slowed to a walk. At the far end of the platform, a guard on a walkie talkie looked their way and spoke into the device. The platform wasn’t busy, just a handful of young people waiting on benches.

  “Next one won’t be here for several minutes,” Cobi said once he was within earshot. “Dead end, Tommy.”

  Tommy lifted up the bottom of his shirt to show the gun in his waistband. “Don’t make me shoot you, Mr. Tate.”

  Cobi considered the distance between them, whether he could cover it and clock Tommy before he drew the gun. Probably not. But he doesn’t know that guard is twenty yards behind him and closing. Cobi raised both hands slightly, in a show of backing off. “You don’t want to do that. You’re in enough trouble already for killing Brian Featherstone.”

  Tommy looked panicked. “I didn’t kill anybody, man, I’m telling you straight.”

  Cobi’s mind raced back to his own choices, his own decisions, as he tried to figure out his next move. Maybe the gun was a bluff. He could have hit me back in that alley. Maybe he really doesn’t have it in him. Cobi took a step forward.

  Tommy heard the steps of the guard behind him and turned his head quickly. Then he saw Cobi take a step. The gun came out, drawn from his waistband with his unbroken left hand, waving it, first at the guard, then at Cobi. “Don’t come any closer, either of you, or I’ll shoot.”

  The passengers panicked, several falling to the ground, another running past Cobi, ignoring the immediacy of the threat in order to flee.

  Tommy looked around, seeking for another way out. On the stairs where they’d entered, two more guards were making their way towards them. “You’re boxed in, Tommy,” Cobi pointed out. “Police will be all over this place before you can shoot everyone.”

  The young dealer began to look desperate, his eyes flicking from place to place as he looked for any advantage. But there wasn’t one. The guards on the stairs were on the platform proper, closing. “I swear to God, anyone takes another fucking step and one of you gets shot,” Tommy warned.

  They all froze in place. “Son, there’s no reason good enough for this,” said the guard behind Tommy.

  “Yeah… that’s really fucking brave,” Tommy said. “But if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll shoot you.”

  At street level, Mariner shoved open the double doors, flashing his badge even as he pushed his way through a throng of commuters. “Police! Move please! Edmonton police!” He could see the stairs down to the platform just yards away.

  “You’re not going to shoot anyone,” Cobi said. “And you know it.” Even if he’d had the guts, which Cobi didn’t think was the case, he couldn’t take them all out, and the cops outside as well. He had to realize that. The kid was out of options.

  Tommy knew it, too. He looked around quickly again, then glanced backwards over his shoulder at the tunnel, where trains disappeared underground while crossing the river to downtown. Cobi saw the glance, the look in Tommy’s eyes. He also knew at least one of the rails was electrified. “Don’t…!” he began to say as Tommy backed up to the edge then jumped down onto the tracks.

  He’d avoided the center rail, rising to his feet from a crouch and taking off towards the north tunnel.

  “Shit.” Cobi walked over to the edge of the tracks and looked down at them from the platform.

  The nearest guard hustled over. “Don’t even think about it. If he somehow makes it to the next station, we can radio ahead, get the police to pick him up there.”

  “Is there any way he can get out before then?”

  The guard shook his head. “I don’t know. They didn’t tell us that.”

  Cobi looked at the tracks again. If there was a service exit or duct along the way into the adjacent sewer system or support tunnels, they could lose him for good. Before the guard could react he took two quick steps and jumped down, avoiding the rails. “Hey!” the guard yelled from behind him. “Get back here!”

  Other guards arrived at the platform, but Cobi ignored the chorus of voices behind him, not hearing Mariner’s familiar tone as he yelled for him to wait, running as fast as he could into the blackness of the train tunnel.

  45

  In the tunnel, wall sconces every twenty yards or so illuminated just one small area around each, with nothing visible between the gaps.

  Cobi jogged carefully along the service path next to the wall. It was no wider than a suitcase, perhaps two feet of flat surface to keep a person off the adjacent tracks. Up ahead, he could hear Tommy’s footfalls echoing off the hard walls. It was cold in the tunnel, a dampness only found underground, and the air seemed to hiss and swirl slightly as it passed.

  “Give it up, Tommy!” he yelled as he ran. “There’s no way out!” He didn’t know if it was true; for all Cobi knew, Tommy had worked for transit at some point, or knew something else that he didn’t about making it back to the surface.

  Their steps almost masked one another’s. The hiss increased, like a slight rush of pressure. What was that? Cobi thought. Gust picked up…

  He felt the train before he saw it, the iron handrail beside him vibrating, the rush of air growing louder, a sudden arc of lights coming around the next bend. Cobi threw his body against the wall just as the train rounded the corner at full speed, the volume nearly unbearable. The train rushed by as a blur of screeching white light; Cobi clamped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes until the last vibration rolled past. The he let out a deep breath of relief.

  Ahead, he could hear Tommy running again. He headed up the service path, ignoring the tension he felt each time his vision dimmed in the darkness. He saw Tommy in the glow of a wall sconce, just fifty yards ahead, and he picked up his
pace, closing on him, closing, almost close enough to…

  There was another loud whistling rush of air, this time from ahead of them. Both men stopped for a moment and hugged the wall, unsure if a train was coming. The rails vibrated again, the alto scream of the steel wheels beginning to fill the tunnel… but this time on the opposite rail as the southbound train shot past them. Both men looked at each other even as it passed, both realizing simultaneously that it was too far away to harm them. Tommy began to run again, but he looked like he was tiring, and Cobi didn’t even need his second wind yet. He narrowed the gap, until Tommy was just five yards ahead, almost close enough to grab.

  But then he stopped dead, turning quickly, the gun outstretched. Cobi dove to the service path floor as the gunshots cracked loudly, echoing around them like firecrackers, bullets pinging off the cement. Cobi rolled sideways to get out of the light, off the path and onto the tracks. He grunted from the slight fall while Tommy fired two more shots into the shadows.

  “I don’t want to kill you, Mr. Tate, but I will if you keep following me,” he said, his voice tired and desperate.

  Cobi crawled along the track, staying in the shadows.

  “Where are you, Mr. Tate?” Tommy called, peering into the dark. “Come out and I promise I won’t shoot. Come on. You said it yourself, I don’t have it in me.” He crept along the edge of the service path, leaning as he crouched slightly, looking for any sign of movement.

  The hand came out of nowhere, Cobi reaching up over the edge of the path and grabbing Tommy’s ankle, yanking hard. Tommy tried to train the gun towards the rail even as his feet came out from under him and he fell forward, coming down directly on top of the older man.

  Both struggled to their feet, just the barest arc of light from the wall letting them see one another. Tommy was up first, standing on the opposite side of the tracks, his arm outstretched, Cobi dead to rights in his sights.

  Cobi was up to his knees, then in a crouch. “Stay down!” Tommy barked. “Back down on your knees. Do it! Put your hands behind your head! Now!”

  He complied before quickly glancing either way down the tunnel. “This isn’t the best way to handle this, Tommy. You have to trust me; I’ve been where you are man, you have to understand that. And you can get out of this okay. But I can’t let you just go, and you can’t just leave me here.”

  Tommy stood on the opposite track and stared at him for a couple of seconds. He didn’t say anything right away, sniffling slightly and wiping his nose with the back of his shirt sleeve. Then he smirked a little, the way a bully smirks when he sees someone else humiliated.

  “I can’t just… Man, you have to be the dumbest motherfucker I ever met,” Tommy insulted. The voice was the same, but the tone changed. There was no more nervousness or frightened compliance. He cocked the gun. “The truth is right in front of you and even then you don’t accept it. How stupid can one person be?”

  Cobi closed his eyes and breathed in sharply, struck involuntarily for a second by his own naiveté.

  “You shot Featherstone, didn’t you?”

  “Two in the back of the head, the way the bad guys on TV do it,” Tommy confessed.

  “You took him to the ATM at gunpoint?”

  “Uh uh. He couldn’t take out enough at one time ‘cos he’d already paid Ritchie. So we hit the safe at his wife’s little love shack. But it was empty, and instead he tried to get away.”

  “You don’t have a car.”

  He shrugged.

  “But Ritchie does…”

  He smiled. “Now you’re getting it.”

  “When Featherstone tried to get away, you shot him; Ritchie promised he’d help you clean it up if you paid him the money you got from the safe but when it came up empty, you owed him, big time. He probably suggested incriminating Featherstone’s girlfriend by dumping him in the street outside her house, figuring her prints would be all over the apartment. But neither of you counted on Paul Sidney.”

  Tommy smiled, looking proud of himself. “Congratulations, superstar. Do you want me to whine and cry and tell you I needed the money?”

  “I don’t need to see another of your acts,” Cobi said. “I’m just surprised Ritchie Grant didn’t kill you.”

  He shrugged. “I could have handled Ritchie. I handled you pretty easily. It all would have worked out, if that fool hadn’t gone outside and stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong.”

  Cobi reached into his coat, and Tommy straightened his gun arm. “Uh-uh-uh.”

  Cobi withdrew the hand slowly. He was holding his cellphone. “I recorded us. Part of the whole investigator job.”

  “It’s not going to help you.”

  “You shoot me, they’ll get your name off of Gail eventually. It won’t take them long to figure out who you are, especially if Ms. Harper helps them out.”

  “So maybe I’ll kill her next, tie up loose ends,” Tommy planned. “You got to do in this life, you know? You got to handle your shit, look out for number one.”

  He cocked the gun.

  “So that’s it?” Cobi said.

  “Bye bye, superstar.” Tommy slowly squeezed the trigger.

  The crack of the gunshot shook Cobi to the core; but it was Tommy who stumbled sideways and fell down, screaming “FUUUCK!” at the top of his lungs. He scrambled up immediately, hand on his left shoulder to staunch the blood flow, both men looking back towards the university station. Mariner closed in from thirty yards away.

  Tommy took a bead back and fired, squeezing off three rounds in the detective’s direction. Mariner went down hard, grabbing at his leg with an audible grunt. Tommy ran the other way down the tunnel, gun still extended. Cobi rose cautiously and ran over to the policeman.

  “Jon?” It was the man from the bar. What the hell…?

  “Det. Jon Mariner.” The pain from the gunshot wound to his thigh strained his voice.

  Cobi had questions, but no time. He looked back towards the tunnel.

  “Leave him!” Mariner said through gritted teeth. “We’ve got men going into the tunnel from the next stop, downtown.”

  Cobi hesitated. “You sure he can’t get out somewhere before then?”

  Mariner was panting, squinting from the pain. “No.”

  “You going to live?”

  Flashlights appeared behind them. “I’m okay. Go! Just go…” Mariner managed. “Wait…! Here…”

  Cobi crouched close and Mariner whispered to him…. and then Cobi rose quickly, looked back once, and sprinted down the tunnel after the younger man.

  The track wound around a bend, the darkness near-encompassing again. Cobi crouched as he jogged. The utility path had disappeared and there was just a man-sized gap between the tracks and the tunnel wall. He stayed close to it, trying to glance into the patches of light ahead; the crunch of both men’s feet on the gravel between the tracks echoed through the underground, and their shadows were cast long from each light sconce, cascading and stretching across the concrete tunnel roof as they moved.

  Cobi felt the train before he heard it, a grinding bellow, followed by the familiar rush of air. He hugged the wall of the tunnel as the chain of northbound carriages rounded the corner behind him then sped past. Tommy was maybe thirty yards ahead, both men pushed up tight to the brick, hands cupped over their ears.

  And then the carriages began to slow. Within a few moments, the train ground to a halt. Cobi glanced both ways down the tunnel but it was quiet save for the buzz of the lights on the train. Inside the carriage next to him, a handful of startled passengers stared out of the large windows, their facial expressions suggesting the brighter lights inside the train made it hard to see through the reflections on the glass.

  They’ve stopped all traffic. He glanced down the tunnel again and could barely make out the shape of Tommy hugging the wall twenty-five yards ahead, the train lights helping to ward off the dark.

  Tommy craned his neck around to look back. Then he turned quickly, the pistol raised with both hand
s so that he could aim. Cobi dove to his left as the first shot rang out, the report greeted by screams from passengers. He hugged the base of the carriage by the doors, unwilling to risk sliding underneath and hitting an electrified rail, then crawled as quickly as he could to the gap between the two carriages as Tommy unleashed two more volleys. The shots echoed sharply in the underground space.

  The younger man backtracked towards where Cobi had disappeared. “Come on out, Mr. Tate, and I’ll make this quick. You don’t, I’m going to have to get on board and grab me some hostages.”

  Cobi crept alongside the car, moving backwards slowly so that his feet wouldn’t crunch too loudly on the loose stone beside the tracks. He could hear Tommy’s breathing, short and sharp, nervous.

  “There are only two ways to go, and I know you don’t want me to hurt any of these people.” Tommy climbed the gap between the two cars. Cobi had reached the same point one car back and as Tommy looked north he quickly returned to the side of the northbound tunnel. The stone floor was smoother, and he snuck quickly back to where he’d started, hoping to come up behind his pursuer.

  Tommy stepped quickly back out from between the trains, facing him and just ten yards away, the gun extended. “Wrong way, Champ.” He pulled the trigger.

  Cobi attempted to dive clear, but the bullet tore into his thigh, searing hot pain flashing through flesh and bone. Cobi moaned loudly and collapsed, instinctively clutching the wound as he grimaced .

  Tommy walked towards him slowly. Cobi knew he had to get up, try and get away. But the pain was too great, the wound bloody enough to be serious. He felt his own breath hot and heavy, his head swimming slightly from the pain.

  “So this is it,” Tommy mocked, standing over him. “I guess you just pick the wrong friends sometimes, eh, Mr. Tate?” He raised the gun level with Cobi’s head.

  “I… guess so,” Cobi managed. Despite the pain, he tried to squeeze the wound, staunch the blood flow.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Tate.”.

  “Tommy… don’t you want to know?”